Archive for March, 2011

I had a problem where I had taken a drive out of /etc/fstab, but it was still mounting on a reboot. I finally traced the problem to the haldaemon and fstab-sync. My understanding is haldaemon is the thing that watches for hardware changes and automounts flash drives and the like. It also can update /etc/fstab with these changes. This is something that I don’t want, so my first impulse was to turn haldaemon off. But then, if someone did plug in a flash drive, it would have to be mounted manually. After reading a bit on haldaemon, I found that I could disable the changing of the fstab file by changing a link. Specifically, I had to change the link /etc/hal/device.d/50-fstab-sync.hal from pointing to /usr/bin/fstab-sync to /bin/false.

After rebooting a node with a spare drive in the raid, I got errors saying that the spare drive was an inoperable unit.

//cps1> info c0

Unit  UnitType  Status         %RCmpl  %V/I/M  Stripe  Size(GB)  Cache  AVrfy
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
u0    RAID-5    OK             -       -       64K     1862.61   ON     OFF    
u1    RAID-5    INOPERABLE     -       -       64K     1862.61   OFF    OFF    

Port   Status           Unit   Size        Blocks        Serial
---------------------------------------------------------------
p0     OK               u0     465.76 GB   976773168     WD-WCANU2126397     
p1     OK               u0     465.76 GB   976773168     WD-WCANU2051520     
p2     OK               u1     465.76 GB   976773168     WD-WCANU2030999     
p3     OK               u0     465.76 GB   976773168     WD-WCAS84739115     
p4     OK               u0     465.76 GB   976773168     WD-WCANU2114264     
p5     OK               u0     465.76 GB   976773168     WD-WCANU2051215     
p6     NOT-PRESENT      -      -           -             -
p7     NOT-PRESENT      -      -           -             -

To fix this, I just deleted the unit (u1) and added the disk back as a spare.

//cps1> /c0/u1 del
Deleting /c0/u1 will cause the data on the unit to be permanently lost.
Do you want to continue ? Y|N [N]: Y
Deleting unit c0/u1 ...Done.


//cps1> info c0

Unit  UnitType  Status         %RCmpl  %V/I/M  Stripe  Size(GB)  Cache  AVrfy
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
u0    RAID-5    OK             -       -       64K     1862.61   ON     OFF    

Port   Status           Unit   Size        Blocks        Serial
---------------------------------------------------------------
p0     OK               u0     465.76 GB   976773168     WD-WCANU2126397     
p1     OK               u0     465.76 GB   976773168     WD-WCANU2051520     
p2     OK               -      465.76 GB   976773168     WD-WCANU2030999     
p3     OK               u0     465.76 GB   976773168     WD-WCAS84739115     
p4     OK               u0     465.76 GB   976773168     WD-WCANU2114264     
p5     OK               u0     465.76 GB   976773168     WD-WCANU2051215     
p6     NOT-PRESENT      -      -           -             -
p7     NOT-PRESENT      -      -           -             -

//cps1> /c0 add type=spare disk=2
Creating new unit on controller /c0 ... Done. The new unit is /c0/u1.
WARNING: This Spare unit may replace failed drive of same interface type only.

//cps1> info c0

Unit  UnitType  Status         %RCmpl  %V/I/M  Stripe  Size(GB)  Cache  AVrfy
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
u0    RAID-5    OK             -       -       64K     1862.61   ON     OFF    
u1    SPARE     OK             -       -       -       465.753   -      OFF    

Port   Status           Unit   Size        Blocks        Serial
---------------------------------------------------------------
p0     OK               u0     465.76 GB   976773168     WD-WCANU2126397     
p1     OK               u0     465.76 GB   976773168     WD-WCANU2051520     
p2     OK               u1     465.76 GB   976773168     WD-WCANU2030999     
p3     OK               u0     465.76 GB   976773168     WD-WCAS84739115     
p4     OK               u0     465.76 GB   976773168     WD-WCANU2114264     
p5     OK               u0     465.76 GB   976773168     WD-WCANU2051215     
p6     NOT-PRESENT      -      -           -             -
p7     NOT-PRESENT      -      -           -             -

That is how it should look.